


I Hope You Know Somebody Loves You

by lizimajig



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Headcanon, I Blame Tumblr, Kid Fic, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2716562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/pseuds/lizimajig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dear team:</i>
  <br/>
  <i>We know you are coming and won't be far behind us, so we leave you the one thing Jemma and I can't bear to lose... The story is longer than we are able to tell here, but we fear what would become of her if Hydra found her with us. So we leave her in your care until we can be with her again. We know you are coming for us and are closer all the time. Please hurry,</i>
  <br/>
  <i>FitzSimmons</i>
</p><p>Based on <a href="http://41.media.tumblr.com/ddfb1cfc5a77a1aeb0940b547d6ad736/tumblr_nf0ijk6MG01u018z1o5_r1_1280.jpg">this AoS headcanon textpost</a> by leofjtz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hope You Know Somebody Loves You

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. As I said, based on [this AoS headcanon textpost](http://41.media.tumblr.com/ddfb1cfc5a77a1aeb0940b547d6ad736/tumblr_nf0ijk6MG01u018z1o5_r1_1280.jpg) by leofjtz. I said it twice because it's important, folks.  
> 2\. This takes place in some canon divergent timeline where I haven't figured out all the rules yet, but here is what I know: Ward was not Hydra or the team pulled him back onto their side ~~with the power of friendship~~. The med pod incident did not happen, FitzSimmons got their shit together and got together, and Hydra still had a huge science crush on them and wanted them for their own.  
>  3\. This is unbetaed so all typos/SPAG errors are mine and mine alone.  
> 4\. Psst. Leave me a comment. Make me happy. :D

Skye knew in the pit of her stomach that the Hydra base would be empty by the time they got there -- until Tony Stark or whoever got his ass in gear and made teleportation travel economical as well as safe, they would always be a martyr to the laws of physics -- but based on the evidence left behind, it couldn’t have been too long since the room had been emptied. The mug of tea on the long counter of the well-appointed lab was still steaming hot alongside a half-eaten danish; even the numerous monitors hadn’t gone idle yet, still displaying a mixture of the CCTV security feed and a cascade of code that went by too fast for Skye to read. 

"Clear down the east hall," Trip called from his location. 

"And here," Ward added from his end of the lab, checking what Skye figured had to be a storage closet.

"Here, too," May completed from the other end of the base, and the tension went out of everyone.

"I hate it when we just show up fifteen minutes late with Starbucks," Skye grumbled, holstering her gun. "They’re just two steps ahead of us."

"And a month ago they were three ahead of us," Ward told her in the maddeningly calm, patient tone he had. "And half a year ago, it was five steps. Last year at this time it was a complete blindside. We’re going to keep tracking them, and get Fitz and Simmons back."

Even though part of her bristled at how nothing ever seemed to rattle Ward, she knew he was right, and that he was just as disappointed as she was from the set of his shoulders. "I know," she said, unhappily. "A year ago -- " 

Skye was interrupted by Coulson poking his head into the lab. "We should go. Anything we can use in here?"

"Closet’s empty, but they cleared it out in a hurry," Ward confirmed.

"They usually take their hard drives with them when they run out like this but I can check real quick," Skye answered.

"Then do that. I want to be out of here in no more than ten," Coulson replied as he left, agitated, and May close behind him.

Skye let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. "Okay, well, they’ve ripped everything out of here that wasn’t nailed down," she said, looking at the empty spots on the terminals where the computers would have ordinarily sat, a nest of cables laying in their places. 

"Server room?" Ward suggested.

"Don’t mind if I do," she said with false cheer, leading the way from the lab when she stopped in her tracks. "Wait. Do you hear that?"

Ward managed to stop before running her over. "What? Skye, I didn’t -- "

"Shh," she ordered, and the only sound for a moment was the quiet hum of machinery and the impatience radiating off Ward. Then she heard it again -- a small, strangled cry. "There! Did you hear that?"

"Yeah. I did," he said, hand on his holster as he became wary again. "It sounds like…"

"A baby," Skye completed.

"What would Hydra be doing with a baby?" Ward said, not necessarily to Skye, but because it sounded too borderline screwball comedy to be real and it didn’t make any more sense once he said it out loud.

"You tell me," she replied dryly, and he gave her an annoyed look in return. She ignored it and went back to honing in on the noise.

"Hey, were you two about finished? Coulson’s pacing like a caged tiger -- "

" _Shh_ ," Skye and Ward shushed Trip in unison, whose confusion immediately showed on his face. "There’s a baby in here," Skye added.

"A say _what?_ " he returned. "What would Hydra be doing with a baby?"

"Ward’s going to tell us later," she said, distractedly following the cry as it grew louder. "Here." She pointed to a low cabinet in the back corner, fastened shut by an ordinary padlock. "Ward -- "

"Got it," he said, anticipating her request. He picked up what was probably an exorbitantly expensive microscope, and with one, two, three hits had broken the lock and the cabinet swung open silently, leaving Skye, Ward, and Trip staring at the incredibly small and incredibly loud baby ensconced in an array of towels and blankets. 

"Damn," Trip swore.

"Hello, ‘scuse me, what's the hold up -- what is that?" Lance asked as he approached the trio.

"A sixteen pound turkey, what does it look like?" Skye snapped impatiently. She reached in to the cabinet and took the baby out, and it quieted slightly in response. 

"... What is Hydra doing with a baby?" he then asked, after processing that.

"You're right, that's definitely the question we should be asking right now," Ward said dryly, peering over Skye's shoulder at the infant, swaddled quite securely in a full-sized blanket. "Hey there's..."

"Take it," she said, seeing it too: the corner of a manila envelope sticking out from the folds of the blanket.

He did just that, picking it up and taking out the paper that was tucked inside. He read in quiet for a moment. "Oh my god."

Ward was not usually the "oh my god" sort, so that drew Skye's attention, but it was the way all the blood had drained away from his face that made her ask, "Grant? What?"

He lowered it so she could read it, and Trip and Lance huddled around as well. Skye recognized the angular scrawl immediately as Fitz's. " _Dear team_ ," she started, reading aloud. " _We know you are coming and won't be far behind us, so we leave you the one thing Jemma and I can't bear to lose._ " She was starting to feel vaguely sick; she'd only made it to the first sentence and she felt like she already knew how this ended. 

" _Her name is Ruby Jane_ ," Ward continued when she couldn't. " _Born 19 December approximately 2:30 AM. Healthy so far as we have been able to tell. The story is longer than we are able to tell here, but we fear what would become of her if Hydra found her with us. So we leave her in your care until we can be with her again. We know you are coming for us and are closer all the time. Please hurry, FitzSimmons._ "

"So," Lance started slowly, "we're saying... Fitz and Simmons managed to shag, get pregnant, and have a baby while in Hydra captivity and nobody noticed?"

"We're in the middle of nowhere and knew they were being kept with minimum detail. I doubt they caused a lot of trouble, after..." Trip trailed off -- after the evidence they'd found in their first raid, almost a full year ago the month after the scientists had been taken. "It wouldn't be totally impossible," he concluded.

"Yeah, I just don't like the look of it is all," Lance said.

"I think she's a little young to report back," Skye argued.

"Okay, look -- " Ward started.

"Hey!" All four adults looked to the door and even little Ruby Jane quieted at Phil Coulson's shout. 

"Hydra wasn't doing anything with a baby," Lance replied first.

"What?" Coulson asked, brows drawing together in confusion. 

"Circumstances have changed," Skye translated as Ward held out the letter for the director.

Coulson took the letter from Ward and read it over. His face changed as he did so, from puzzlement, to shock, and something Skye couldn't describe but looked akin to something she would have named "furious heartbreak." He handed the letter back. "Change of plans. We need to strip this place from top to bottom, look for anything else they might have left behind. Now."

\---

Within a couple hours, they were on the Bus headed back to the Playground and square one. One of the medics checked little Ruby Jane Fitz over and declared her in general good health despite being on the small side of average, all of her reflexes sound and working. Perhaps more importantly, there were no signs of a tracker, bug, or instrument that would otherwise compromise them. Skye couldn't stand to leave her alone, but she wasn't the only one. Coulson had been in and out of the examination, hanging back. 

"What do you think?" she asked him, when the medic disappeared to run a further blood test. "Is it possible?"

Coulson released a sigh. "They're left more or less alone as long as they're meeting benchmarks set for them by Hydra -- although their expectations are extraordinarily low, I'm sure FitzSimmons could build them an arsenal to take us and whatever nation wanted to try and stand against them. If they weren't being checked on so often, it's possible. And I don't know where else she would have come from." He was beside her now, gazing down at the baby's features. "If she's a plant or a distraction, they've put a lot of thought into it."

"How so?"

"Her name. And if they went to the trouble of making Fitz write the note -- the analysis was complete, right?"

"Yeah. One hundred percent Leo Fitz on that paper," Skye answered quickly. "What about the name?"

"Ruby Jane," Coulson repeated. "Fitz's grandmother's name. Hell of a woman from what I'm led to understand."

"How do you even know that?" she asked rhetorically.

"You think I don't know my peoples' files inside and out?" he returned easily.

"Sorry I asked," she said wryly. Her breath caught in her throat as Ruby's tiny fingers wrapped around one of hers. "Are they always so small?"

"Well, I don't claim to be an expert, but she seems okay for just over three weeks old."

"Three weeks," Skye echoed, and sighed. "God, what were we even doing three weeks ago? And they -- Jemma was -- "

"We'll find them," he said firmly. "We'll find them and bring them home and Ruby will have her mom and dad again."

Skye's throat closed, and she nodded her agreement. Coulson squeezed her shoulder. "Try to get some rest," he told her, and she nodded again. He left her there with Ruby, who was slipping back to sleep herself.

\---

Rest was in short supply, though. Skye could not make herself leave Ruby, even for a moment, including when she slept. She took her to her bunk, and set her carefully near the wall and used her own body to box her in. She listened to the soft breathing, and watched her chest rise and fall in her slumber. It eventually lulled Skye into a doze, but the sharp, tiny wail pierced that quickly and she started awake.

"Hey lady, what's with the screaming?" she murmured in a quiet, soothing tone. "Shh, what's wrong, hm?"

Following an apparent example set by Fitz and Simmons, they were improvising for everything until they could get back on the ground and get real supplies for baby Ruby, and the toweling they'd used for a diaper was wet. "That can't be real comfy. C'mon, Auntie Skye will take care of that for you."

It took a few minutes, but Skye wrangled Ruby into something dry and sat with her on the couch in the dim common area. "This'll be nicer than bed," she said, snuggling in with Ruby. Rather than settling back to sleep, she opened her eyes wide and took in Skye as she did likewise. "Look at you, little girl."

Ruby looked up at her with wide blue eyes, and it took her breath away. _The same color as Fitz's_ , she realized, and her stomach dropped. It wasn't the first time she'd missed her friends in the last year, but it did hit her hard and she swallowed the lump in her throat. "Beautiful blue eyes," she sing-songed. "Do you have daddy's curls though? Too early to tell, I guess. There's not much up there, is there?" She smoothed a hand over Ruby's hair, and she stretched under her hand; for a moment Skye thought she would cry again.

"Hey, hey, c'mon. We were doing so well," she whispered to her, and she settled again. "There you go. I knew you had to be made of sterner stuff with Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons as your mom and dad."

Skye searched her face in silence another moment, looking to see which one Ruby might favor otherwise. "I think you've got your mom's face. But who can tell." She sighed as Ruby fussed slightly. "Oh babe, I know it's scary right now, but you're going to be fine. And you know how I know? Because that cute little nose and those baby blues aren't the only things your parents gave you. You're going to be smart; beauty _and_ brains, lucky you. And brave. _So_ brave, and you won't even...

"Your mom saved my life once, you know that? If it had been anyone else I would have been one dead auntie. And it's not just me. She's always working so hard to make people better -- not just by being a doctor. And she's not even that kind of doctor, you know? She just _does it._ She's -- kind, and everyone loves her. But she's so... you'd never guess she's got a spine like steel. It's not the kind of courage that storms the castle walls, it's better than that. Your mom is amazing, kiddo."

If she didn't know better she could have imagined that Ruby was listening intently. "Your mom knows the human body and everything in it like the back of her hand, and your dad knows how everything else works. I swear, Ruby Jane, I've seen him build the most amazing things -- everything from robots to weapons just by repurposing things that were lying around. He just... he just _knows_ these things, like... I don't know anyone else who can do what he does. And he's. He believes in people and that's so... he always wants them to be good. I wish I could do that. That's a special kind of courage, too. He's so funny sometimes, Ruby, he... I don't know a lot about dads, but I can't imagine he'd be anything but the best."

"And together, they're just..." Words didn't usually fail Skye, but in that moment, overcome with emotion and moved by the slow, sleepy blink of the baby in her arms, it was hard to speak at that moment. "More than the sum of their parts. And now they have you."

But that wasn't really true, was it? They were still in Hydra's hands, and had left their three week old infant behind because they knew how she would be used against all of them if they hadn't. "Don't think for a minute they wanted to leave you, Ruby. I bet it was harder than anything they've ever had to do. But they knew we were going to do everything to protect you and we'd have them back for you in no time." Her heart was in her mouth again, and no matter how she tried she couldn't get rid of it.

"They're my best friends, and I miss them. But not as much as I bet they miss you." She felt herself tremble slightly. "But you're just as tough as they are. They're going to pull each other through and come back to us. You'll see."

Ruby's eyes had finally closed again, her breathing settled into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Skye tried to quietly sniffle her tears away, and was more or less successful in that. "Yeah, you go ahead and sleep, little girl. I got you."

She did her best to make herself comfortable on the couch with Ruby cuddled in close to her, and closed her eyes, listening to the white noise of the engines.

 _Don't worry, guys,_ she told her friends, wherever they may be, _I got her._


End file.
